


Backup Files – Some Kinda Afterlife, Huh?

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst and Fluff, Artificial Intelligence, M/M, NDRV3 Spoilers, Post NDRV3, remnants of despair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 11:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16533644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: There’s the final breath, and then…  Soon enough…  There’s something else.





	Backup Files – Some Kinda Afterlife, Huh?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there~ I hope you have fun with this fic, if you read it! 
> 
> I love writing Ghost!Kokichi post-game AU stories, but I’ve been toying around with the idea for this thing for a while, too… Hehe. Hopefully it came out okay - sorry for anything I got wrong!! Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a great day. :D

All the world was a stretched-out second, now, just before the hydraulic press fell.  Kokichi Oma’s head swum, feverish and smothered with poison. It burned under his skin like his body wouldn’t be able to hold itself together much longer – and he knew, _he knew_ it wouldn’t, though not ‘cause of any poisoned arrow that’d already gotten itself _oh so mysteriously_ stuck in his back.  It was all part of the deal, really.  The gamble.  It was just a feeling, like the heavy burn of tears behind his eyes...  The salt of them against his cheeks.  The sharp hair product-y smell of Kaito Momota’s jacket, which he was lying sprawled across, currently — as unlikely as all that sounded, ha! — so their trick might work... And, of course, it was a feeling like the cold of so much steel beneath and surrounding Kokichi, as he knew he would’ve been able to count out all the heartbeats he had left on his fingers and toes, if he’d felt like it.

It was like Kokichi’d climbed into one of Korekiyo Shinguji’s ancient crypts, sort of.  Metallic smells everywhere: Kaito’s hair stuff and blood, that huge robot hangar thingy and…  Welp, more blood.  Kokichi was burying himself in a metal sarcophagus, tapping his toes together as he waited for his tomb to slam itself shut.

Kokichi considered all that cold steel around him, and he thought — though he tried not to — about the cold of all those last exhausted words Shuichi Saihara had offered him, too. He’d never gotten the chance to drown out those decisions the Ultimate Detective had made about him with something more.  Never gotten the chance to change Shuichi’s mind, slowly, the way he’d daydreamed he could if they were actually stuck rattling around there for the rest of their natural lives.  The way he might’ve been able to, really, truly, but also...  Maybe not.

Kokichi was the kinda liar who tried not to get all tangled up lying to himself, yeah, but sometimes he couldn’t completely help it.  His D.I.C.E. gang members had gone out of their way to remind him he was only human, every now and again.  Only human, and sometimes thoughts came to him as he was half-awake, drifting and honest and realer than he wanted to let himself be.

 _“I might’ve been wrong about you,”_ Kokichi had imagined Shuichi saying. Tentatively. Wonderingly.  _“I think I know your plan, now…  You were only ever trying to end the killing game, right, Kokichi?  You meant it when you said you saw us as your friends.”_

And Kokichi imagined himself smirking, impish and rocking back on his heels. Drawling that _hm, hm, hm,_ he just didn’t know, now. Would an Ultimate Supreme Leader do something like that?

Kokichi figured by then Shuichi would know that meant he was saying, _“Yes, yes, you dummy!  Of course. I’ve been waiting for you to catch on forever!”_

Or maybe Kokichi would’ve actually said all that — the last part, the painfully true part — throwing his arms around Shuichi’s neck and laughing sort of like he might’ve laughed with his D.I.C.E. teammates. You know, before.  Before Kokichi’d known what it was like to be alone, with no one around willing to get his jokes.  No one around really on the same page with anybody else at all.  It _was_ a killing game, so...

So they’d all kept their secrets bundled close, like blood under their skin, like mysterious rubber horse head masks smuggled back to their dorm rooms in the dead of night. Kokichi thought he was just a little more obvious about it all.  He wore his lies on his sleeve — part of the brand, by now.

D.I.C.E. had gotten it.  But then, D.I.C.E. had nearly always been in on Kokichi’s jokes.

The hydraulic press crunched shut, and Kaito Momota gagged a little up at the controls.  Choking on the smell of blood, maybe.  Kokichi fell apart.

It happened so quickly

He didn’t even manage to finish letting out his breath.

-

And then, the next time something spoke to him, Kokichi thought about breathing –

But suddenly realized he wasn’t sure how to, anymore.

It felt as if that realization happened just a moment later, an instant after the bit with the dying and the hydraulic press tomb and all.  It was just a blink.  Just one more uncounted heartbeat.

Except, of course, it wasn’t.

The world was a stretched-out second just before the hydraulic press fell, and then (wouldn’t you know it) everything was a huge and gulping emptiness.  Kokichi wouldn’t remember anything much from that part, later, though he would play like he did to keep Shuichi waiting with his mouth hanging open. To keep Shuichi’s eyebrows raised, and his detective brain churning along, trying to put pieces together that didn’t exist.  It was fun, and Shuichi _knew_ Kokichi was having fun with it, but he kept on listening just the same.

Truth be told, though, no: Kokichi didn’t remember a thing.  He was lying on Kaito’s jacket in a puddle of his own sticky blood and then he was in a dark place and he couldn’t breathe or flex his fingers or fiddle awkwardly with his flippy purple hair.  A light flickered on slowly — light and static, and then glitching shapes against the void.  They formed a human face, but not one Kokichi’d ever seen before.  It was all sharp teeth and sharper eyes, all pink-ish hair with streaks of white running through it.  Kokichi noticed details vaguely, even as he reached for his limbs and found nothing, nothing.  The guy was wearing some kinda jumpsuit, for one.  The room beyond him was cluttered with robot-looking parts and filing cabinets overflowing with random crap.  The guy reached out and tapped against Kokichi’s field of vision a couple times, and then sighed. 

Kokichi thought Mystery Jumpsuit Guy was relieved, and then he said, “Uh, hi.  It’s Oma, isn’t it?  How much do you remember?”

Kokichi couldn’t breathe.  He couldn’t _breathe_ , and he couldn’t feel the ache in his shoulders that’d been around all throughout that dang killing game, probably from hunching over books and plans and Ultimate Detective casefiles and amazing rainbow-laser designs all the time.  For a second, Kokichi thought not being able to breathe might get in the way of talking, just a little.  It felt like a logical conclusion, for some bizarre reason.  But then he figured what the hell, he’d give it a shot.   He cleared his throat and said, “I guess I got sent to the _weird_ afterlife, huh?”

“I dunno about that,” Mystery Jumpsuit Guy said.  He shrugged, running a hand through his hair.  All the roots were coming back in white, and playing with it messed up his ponytail.  “Your classmate Shinguji was really interested in talking about afterlives, too, but…  Uh, for all I know, some parts of you actually _did_ pass on?  This is really, y’know, a backup, just in case they needed to bring you back on the...  I mean, shit.  You don’t know about all that yet.  It’s usually better if we break the news slowly, or, or get somebody you know to do it...  Just a sec, okay, Oma?”

“No, _you_ ‘just a sec,’ thanks.  _A backup?_ ” Kokichi asked, before Mystery Jumpsuit Guy could squirm away.  It looked like he very much _wanted_ to squirm away, but Kokichi still had an Ultimate Supreme Leader voice tucked up his non-existent sleeves, and it could get scary as holy hell if he wanted it to.  He imagined his go-to tyrannical smile slithering across his face, so slimy and conniving, so familiar, like a comic book hero hefting some kinda trusted sword.  He imagined it, but of course he couldn’t feel a thing.

“Oh…  Well, yeah.  Right.  We were afraid they wouldn’t have gotten around to backing up your memories, after everything that happened.  But I can promise your classmates are gonna be really happy they did…  Or at least, some of them have been asking about you, you know?  Some of them have been helping us search around the Team Danganronpa wreckage, too, which I can tell you not every Killing School class would be willing to do.  Hajime insists we track down everybody we can, though.  We still haven’t found Momota, either, but finding _you_ means –”

“Okay,” Kokichi said.  “Okay.  I’m a digital backup? ‘Team Danganronpa,’ whatever the hell…”  He laughed.  He’d been hoping his laughter would come out smooth and mocking – Supreme Leader-ish, you know the drill – but it was a strangled sound, instead.  Frantic.  If Kokichi could’ve paced, throwing on some sort of maniacal swagger to remember his role…  If he could’ve thrown his hands in the air – exasperated and amazed, overwhelmed and disbelieving – maybe it could’ve been _some_ release.  But he couldn’t, _he couldn’t_ , and now he was almost cackling as he said, “But oh – oh _come on_!  That’s just cruel.  I’ll figure the rest of this out, don’t think I won’t, but _please_ don’t tell me my class will be happy to see me.  Didn’t anybody tell you I hate lies?  Anybody could tell you’re just –”

“ _Kokichi?_ ”

A sliver of light appeared from the corner of the world – the corner of the screen.  Or something.  And spilling down from that light, apparently, there was a stairway.  It all seemed to be swaying, sort of, now that Kokichi was actually studying it…  Swaying like they were on some kind of freaking boat.  _Of course_ they were on some kind of freaking boat – that made about as much sense as everything else Kokichi’d been hearing, didn’t it?  Here, he normally would’ve taken a deep breath and tried to summon back his poker face.  Dying for the sake of a gamble that may or may not have actually worked only to wake in some stranger’s computer really took it out of a guy.

Except –

Except that Kokichi knew the voice calling his name, now, and he thought there was something hopeful and warm inside it that he’d only ever really heard in his reluctant daydreams, recently.

“Mr. Souda,” Shuichi Saihara called, climbing down the stairs, “Did you actually reassemble _Kokichi_?  Why didn’t you call me?”

“I was going to,” this Mr. Souda Jumpsuit Guy grumbled.  “He really likes _commanding people_ though, doesn’t he?”

Shuichi chuckled, and the gentleness there almost broke Kokichi’s heart.  Well.  It might’ve, if he’d had an actual beating heart, right?  Just code and memories.  Just something to reassemble from the wreckage of – of whatever a “Team Danganronpa” was.

“Yeah.  He does,” Shuichi said.  “But usually he’s just playing, I think.  Not _now_ , I mean, but…”

Kokichi studied Shuichi, for a second – looking for obvious robotic parts, like the ones piled haphazardly behind Mr. Souda Jumpsuit Guy, or fresh-looking wounds.  Something like that.  But Shuichi seemed to be all in one piece; Shuichi was wearing long, dark shorts, and a t-shirt with a faded logo on it.  Some kinda foundation Kokichi’d never heard of.  He looked like he’d just been out in the wind, and there was a little sunburn along the edges of his ears.  He was flesh and blood.  Breathing.  He would’ve been able to count and count and count the beating of his heart.

“Did it work, then?” Kokichi breathed – haha, get it?  He _whispered_ , obviously – watching Shuichi like he might suddenly grow cold again at any second.  As if the world might go dark again, and the nature of his bizarre purgatory might change.  “My plan, I mean.  You got out alive?”

“I’m alive,” Shuichi said, though he left it at that, for the time being.  “And so far as I can tell…  In the ways that matter…  So are you.”

Kokichi laughed, again, and he would’ve buried his face in his hands.  Just for a second, so Shuichi wouldn’t be able to see the expression he may or may not be able to hide.  He only vaguely noticed when Mr. Souda Jumpsuit Guy stood up and brushed himself off, hurrying up the boat-stairs and into the mysterious boat-world beyond.  Shuichi settled down in front of Kokichi’s universe – in front of his actual computer screen, somehow, impossibly – and said, “Would you like me to start at the beginning?”

-

The robotic skin that Mr. Kazuichi Souda was building for Kokichi could feel things, sort of.  Like the sun on his sort-of skin, or the splash of ocean water against his cheek.   It was all different than Kokichi remembered from life before the hydraulic press, but hey, at least it was in the same ballpark.  Or, y’know, selling hotdogs up in the bleachers somewhere in that ballpark’s arena?  Oh, well.  Input would make its way to his memory processor thingymawhatsit and produce a reaction, yadda yadda yadda.  Artificial brain chemicals, or some shit.  A machine mirroring flesh, and with Kokichi’s self etched into it carefully over weeks and weeks and weeks.

Shuichi had styled Kokichi’s new hair for him, glancing between the severed robotic head propped up on some boxes and a (very dramatic) picture of Kokichi that’d been taken to advertise the Danganronpa TV show.  Season fifty-three!  All those fancy DVD box sets might as well have been soaked in so much blood, but Kokichi watched Shuichi fix up his new plastic-y purple hair for him in silent shock for a long, long minute.  There was actually an Ultimate Hairdresser in one of the other rescued Danganronpa Show classes, but Shuichi must’ve wanted to do this himself.  Maybe it was all the Ultimate Hairdresser’s Sweeney Todd-ish murder frenzies that did it?  Kokichi’d heard rumors, anyway.  Some of those other Ultimate so-and-sos liked to talk.

Kokichi’s digital face was probably screwed up into some kinda weird expression watching the Ultimate Detective work on his hair, ‘cause Shuichi asked if he minded that Souda hadn’t attached the head yet.  He was still fixing up some glitch with one of Kokichi’s new eyelids, apparently.  But seeing his own Headless Horseman Halloween costume flashing before his eyes wasn’t really what got to Kokichi, there.  The Ultimate Detective was just so _methodical_ about fixing up his goddamn hair.  So methodical and focused that the whole thing became almost tender.  Kokichi wasn’t used to anyone besides D.I.C.E. worrying over him like that, and his D.I.C.E. teammates had mostly worried about whether their Supreme Leader needed stitches, or what their newest heist was gonna be, or if he’d actually eaten a vegetable in the last week.

Kokichi wouldn’t be eating anything at all, now, at least not until Souda got his working digestive track model off scribbly graph paper and into their disbelieving reality.  He’d taught his makeshift robot army how to comprehend taste, though.  Just vaguely, like birdwatching without your glasses in the dark.  It was enough.  Kokichi’d requested lots of Panta and really specific candy, when he figured that out.

The candy was like Kokichi had remembered it, mostly, but the world all around them really wasn’t.  That much was clear as Shuichi’s furrowed brow, trying to memorize _exactly_ how Kokichi’d liked to part his bangs.  All the gathered-up survivors of previous killing games were spread across the world, some working to overthrow what Shuichi described as a “lying peace…”  Some fighting tooth and nail to preserve it, or else maybe live halfway-normal lives disguised as innocent bystanders inside its over-the-top sci-fi embrace.  That peace had led to the Danganronpa Show as a release, though.  That peace was built on blood and half-worship of some jerk named “Junko Enoshima’s” creations.  She was called the Ultimate Despair, and even though she’d become a legend, now – with so many fan-sites dedicated to her Kokichi felt a little sick – Mr. Souda and his friends swore up and down that she was real as they were.  They’d all gone to school together, actually.  Souda said those times didn’t feel as long ago as they probably seemed.

The pieces of this new reality were coming together for Kokichi, bit by ridiculous, terrifying bit.  He and Shuichi would both figure out where they fit in this world eventually, but for now they were sailing with group called the Remnants of Despair.  Uh.  _Former_ Remnants of Despair?  They were all pretty old, at any rate, and had seen some serious shit.  They had gathered up killing school class after robotic class, not giving up on anybody if they could help it.  They had been around when the world first fell apart, Souda said.  Hell, they had helped tear it down, though not exactly _on purpose_.  People had been trying to kill ‘em for a while, anyway, and now that Shuichi Saihara – Official Killing Game Destroyer – was onboard?  Dang.  It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, Kokichi could tell you that.

There was still so much to take in; so much to unlearn, or remember, or choke down like painkillers when everything hurt too much to breathe.  It was hard to believe Kokichi’d never see his nefarious gang again.  People swore up and down that D.I.C.E. had been made up by the killing game’s fifty-third mastermind, Tsumugi Shirogane, but part of Kokichi just couldn’t believe that was all there was to the story.  He knew everything about D.I.C.E. – their birthdays, their phobias, their favorite internet videos.  At the very least, he kept reminding himself that his teammates would live on kinda the same way he would, probably: in artificially-recorded memories.   D.I.C.E. would be an important part of their leader until the day his memory drive got accidentally erased or punted into the sea or something.

Shuichi assured Kokichi that D.I.C.E. would probably feel really loved, knowing their Supreme Leader would hold on to memories of them just about as tightly as his own soul.  He _also_ showed Kokichi his progress on that hair styling adventure every now and then.  Shuichi said stuff like, “Don’t worry.  You can change it up later.  I just…” and then he trailed off.  Shrugging almost self-consciously, the way he had when Kokichi’d asked to have tea parties and play knife games and stuff.

“You want everything to be nice and shiny when I move in,” Kokichi offered, so Shuichi wouldn’t feel like he was expected to keep talking.  At one point he might’ve said his pride as a human was wounded, getting stuffed into a metal skin…  But now, watching the recordings of Shuichi standing up for all their human life – standing up in that final trial against the whole Danganronpa TV show-watching world – made holding on to his changing existence feel like one of the most natural things there was.

Kokichi hadn’t put the feeling in so many words, before, but he was working his way to it.  Kind of like the way he and Ultimate Assassin Maki Harukawa were working their way towards a civil conversation.  Slowly, slowly.  They were all still trying to hunt down Kaito Momota’s backup files, and Maki had seemed sort of touched when Kokichi’d started offering whatever ideas came to him about where to search.  She’d even barked a too-loud laugh when Kokichi acted out a jokey showdown between the Ultimate Astronaut, the Ultimate UFO Enthusiast and the Ultimate Astrologist.  That was a first.  Ha!

This new robotic skin could feel it whenever Kokichi tripped over his own feet, trying to re-learn how to walk.  That was a whole boat-load of fun, you better believe it.  He could feel it, too, when Shuichi nudged his arm very gently and asked if he wouldn’t mind coming to talk with him under the stars, for a while.  On the ship deck, now that almost all the loudest people – loudest besides Kokichi, a certain assassin might say – had gone to sleep.  The ocean tossed beneath them, and a bunch of angry people onshore were probably plotting some sort of takedown attack right that very second, but of course Kokichi brushed his bangs out of his eyes with whirring fingers – metal bones, like the metal tomb that’d crushed him not too long ago, death and life, truth and lies – and said, “Oh sure, Mr. Detective.  But it’ll cost ya.”

Shuichi smiled, sort of sadly.  Why was he sad, though?  Damn, that was the actual opposite of what Kokichi’d meant, with his joke.  “What’ll it cost me?”

Think fast, Kokichi told himself.  What’s something funny?  “I _need_ you to talk to that big-shot Captain Hajime again about my built-in rocket launchers.  What’s the point of being a robot if I don’t have a bunch of exploding gadgets?”

“I’ll…  Get right on that,” Shuichi said, slowly.  A smirk twitched just at the edge of his lip.  “But last time you asked he just rolled his eyes and pointed at the door, remember?”

Kokichi remembered, but he pouted like he didn’t for a minute or two.  He was still figuring out how to pout right with this new robot-face, little by little.  He was beginning to gather up all his old expressions again.

It was a soft, gently drawn-out second before Shuichi told him, “I want to talk about the days before you…  Before you died.  Um.  I said some things, Kokichi.  We’ve talked about it a little, but I want to be sure...”  Shuichi took a breath.  “I want to _take things back_ , officially.  I was wrong about you.”

Kokichi thought back to his time lying across Kaito Momota’s jacket, with the hydraulic press looming above him and daydream-Shuichi’s voice at the edge of his mind.  He could almost smell Kaito’s awful hair gel, again, mixed in with all that blood.  And then he…  Well.

Kokichi may or may not have knocked Shuichi back against some of Souda’s robot-parts boxes, flinging an arm around his shoulders and snickering, “Oh man, you really did!”

May have.

Oops.  Kokichi was still getting used to this new skin, in his defense.  It handled differently than the one he’d been used to.

By that point, though – just like Kokichi’d daydreamed when he didn’t mean to, when he thought he shouldn’t – Shuichi didn’t seem to mind.


End file.
